


after all

by lupinely



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/M, it's 2019 theres no excuse anymore for joan and sherlock to not be in romantic love!!!, proposal fic babey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 01:12:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18272771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lupinely/pseuds/lupinely
Summary: Sherlock almost takes her hand, then decides against it. “Joan,” he says instead, and then gets down on one knee, never looking away from her face.Joan stares at him. “Are you serious?”





	after all

 

 

 

When Joan suggests that he might be (or rather, is) lonely, Sherlock’s initial response is indignation. Later it becomes something more complicated, something hurt, as if she betrayed him somehow by mentioning this. He does not like to feel that way, so he chooses—deliberately, and spinelessly—not to examine those feelings any further.

Then everything with Michael happens. And then Moriarty happens for the second time.

Neither he nor Joan talks about that specific conversation again for a very long time.

When they do, it is because Sherlock brings it up, but in the reverse. Guided by her unerring sense of loyalty, Joan has been taking care of Sherlock— _again,_ Sherlock thinks—since his return. They focus on trying to put their lives back together. They live in London now; but even if they did not, Marcus has left the NYPD and joined the U.S. Marshals, and Gregson is considering retirement. There is little, if anything, that remains in their lives to act as a metaphysical anchor for either of them. Except for each other.

And that is the issue, isn’t it? It has been a slow process, but over the years of their partnership Sherlock has watched Joan go on fewer dates, until she stopped going on any at all. Neither does Sherlock, of course. He suspects that, if he ever examines those feelings of betrayal that he felt after that watershed conversation with Joan, he might finally have to admit to himself why. But the timing has never felt worse. Yet he is worried about her—he would rather do anything, anything at all, than hold back Joan Watson.

So one quiet day when they are both working on separate cold cases, he asks: “Don’t you think you might also be lonely, Watson?” He had not meant to say _also,_ but of course now it is too late to take it back.

She just looks at him. She does not ask what he is talking about, and he does not ask whether she knows. He figures their long-ago conversation has been on her mind regularly enough, if not as often as on his. It is the sort of thing that sticks with you.

After a moment she sighs and returns to the documents she is examining. “You’re not really asking, are you?”

“Well, you didn’t really ask me,” he says. “I should return the favor of being honest.”

Her smile is gentle, maybe sad. Hard to tell. “You haven’t talked to Athena since coming back?” She’s deflecting.

“No. It hasn’t felt right.” He considers his own file in front of him, intending to study it but not doing so. “Nothing really feels right.” Not with other people. Not with anyone but you.

“Yes,” Joan says. “That does seem to be the problem, doesn’t it?”

Sherlock realizes that his mind is already made up, even though he had not thought he had been thinking about this at all. But perhaps he had, in that unconscious way where problems are solved and decisions reached without your realizing. The conclusions he has reached this way previously have always turned out to be right. He has absolutely no idea whether this one is, too.

“Watson,” he says, then stops, because he is uncomfortably close to babbling. The only way to avoid that is to show her exactly what he thinks—what he has thought for years, in the part of his mind that he only rarely lets slip into daylight.

He sets his papers aside and moves before her. She just looks at him, her face impassive. Her hair is up in a bun, recently dyed blonde. _It’s a draw,_ he remembers saying to her nearly seven years ago about her beauty when her hair is down as compared to up. It still is.

He almost takes her hand, then decides against it. “Joan,” he says instead, and then gets down on one knee, never looking away from her face.

She stares at him. “Are you serious?”

“Quite.”

“Oh my god,” she says. “Really? Now? After so long of saying nothing? And you’re not even going to give me the chance to talk about anything, you’re just going to ask, as if there aren’t a billion things we’d need to talk about first?”

“I hardly think there’s a billion,” Sherlock says.

Joan takes his hands and pulls him upright. “I can’t believe you. All this time we spent worrying about the sanctity of our partnership in silence, and you shatter it all in a single moment.” But she sounds amazed, fascinated maybe, and her right hand touches the side of his face. He leans into it.

“It wouldn’t be that different,” he says. She snorts. “No, I mean it. I want everything to be as it is, just....”

“More?” She smiles like she is making fun of him, but that is gentle, too.

“If we must categorize relationships so linearly.” He hesitates. “I want to take care of you. I don’t want you to be lonely, the way you have been.”

“I’m not,” she says, and at his expression: “not really. But there was a lot we chose to leave unsaid.” She sighs, and then smiles at him again. “You, take care of me? That would be an interesting turn of events.”

“I admit,” he says, “I think I could do quite a good job at it, if you would let me.”

“All I have to do is let you?” Her hand on his face moves to join the other at his collar. “I didn’t realize it would be so easy.”

He does not say what he thinks—that letting someone, even Joan, care for him has never been easy for him, not ever. He has fought hard to let her in, and he cherishes the work that he has done towards that, and he cherishes her for staying, especially when he made it hard. Yet perhaps Joan will find it easy. He hopes that she does—that this progression of their relationship, as natural as it is inexplicable, brings her nothing but peace.

Whether it will for him he cannot say. Moriarty’s shadow is long and dark. But there is a chance; one that is greater than zero. Perhaps significantly.

“But let’s talk through it all, at least, before you propose,” Joan says. “Let’s not rush anything.”

“Seven years hardly feels like rushing.”

She smiles, and then she does something completely unexpected—though after this conversation, it is ridiculous that this should shock him. Yet Sherlock’s initial reaction when Joan stands on tiptoe and kisses him (firmly, without reserve) is to withdraw.

Joan tilts her head at him. Again, she does not say anything. She does not need to. She lets him process at his own pace, because she understands.

“May I?” she asks after a moment.

He looks at her: into her dark brown eyes, at the wry twist of her mouth, at the depth of love in her expression, and finds himself speechless. So he nods. And she kisses him.

He is right: this proves to be not that different from their prior arrangement after all. But the ways that it is different matter, immensely so: they develop a life of their own.

 

 

 


End file.
